SUBSCRIBE:

Five essential principles for Internet regulation that were violated in 2012

Share

(Freedom House/IFEX) - January 14, 2013 - One year ago, U.S. lawmakers discovered what happens when you mess with the internet, as Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, and millions of ordinary users helped "black out" the net on January 18 to protest SOPA and PIPA - two controversial pieces of legislation that were designed to fight online piracy, but threatened instead to censor the internet and disrupt the way it functions. Since that day, there has been a rise in new laws around the world that restrict free speech online and prompt arrests of internet users, a key trend identified in Freedom House's 2012 Freedom on the Net report.

There are, of course, legitimate reasons for internet regulations, such as combating identity theft, human trafficking, and trade in child pornography. To ensure that new legal measures are compatible with human rights and democratic principles and effectively meet their intended goals, lawmakers must follow several basic guidelines. Below are five essential principles for internet regulation, and five laws from 2012 that violated them.

1)Be transparent. Governments must ensure transparency when drafting and enforcing laws. The free flow of information is a core principle of the internet, and is impossible without transparency. If a government determines that content should be taken down or blocked, it must disclose every instance of such censorship. Though not a government, Twitter follows this principle - when the service blocks content, the action is documented in the Chilling Effects database.

#RuWikiBlackout: A broadly written internet blacklist law in Russia allows authorities to block websites deemed to contain information that would be "harmful to children." Sites have only 24 hours to comply with government takedown requests before they are totally blocked. Although the government announced that it would publish a full list of all blocked websites at zapret-info.gov.ru, users can currently only search for one website at a time to determine whether it is blocked. Although this is a step in the right direction, requiring users to search for individual sites falls short of true transparency.
2) Seek and incorporate input from technical experts and civil society. Lawmakers must consult technologists and internet experts when drafting internet regulations to ensure that they will not have unintended consequences and are fair, effective, and reasonable. As U.S. Representative Jason Chaffetz warned of the SOPA process, "We're going to do surgery on the internet, and we haven't had a doctor in the room tell us how we're going to change these organs."

#BlackoutJO: In Jordan, an amendment to the 1998 Press and Publications Law ordered "electronic publications" to obtain media licenses and regulate site comments, prohibited insulting the royal family online, and allowed authorities to block websites without a court order. The amendment was approved despite the valid criticism that it is unreasonable to require site owners to monitor high volumes of user comments, and to force sites that could fall under the vaguely defined category of "electronic publications" to follow the same restrictive policies as print media outlets.

3) Use specific, not vague, language. Much of the danger in bad internet laws comes not from the language the authors put in, but rather from what they leave out. For example, legislation may seek to control "sharing" of content, but what does this mean? Sending a file? Tweeting a link? "Liking" a Facebook post? When terms aren't carefully defined, laws have the potential to go beyond the issues they were meant to address and restrict the activities of innocent internet users.

#NoToCybercrimeLaw: The Philippines' Cybercrime Prevention Law of 2012 would extend the country's vague libel law to online speech, with a maximum penalty of 12 years in prison, and leaves open the possibility of writers facing "double punishment" for libel if their work appears both online and in print. Anyone who "shares" offending content online could end up behind bars, but the term "share" is undefined. Following petitions from civil society, the Supreme Court suspended the law until it can rule on its constitutionality in a hearing set to begin on January 15, 2013.

4) Include provisions for judicial oversight and due process. If websites must be blocked, individuals must be punished, or content must be censored, judicial review is essential to ensure that such actions are legitimate and the law is not being abused. Those charged with violating the law must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and provided with the opportunity to defend themselves.

Digital Rights:

More from Digital Rights

The general trend over the past 10 years has been bleak, with an overall negative trajectory for press freedom. The major turning point was the election of Xi Jinping as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China in 2012 and President of China in 2013.

Pakistan has been slow to recognize that violence, threats and harassment faced online by journalists reflects the violence they are exposed to offline. A nationwide survey of working journalists was conducted to ascertain their level of digital insecurity, to record their experiences and the protections they desired from the journalist community, their media organizations, and the government.

Internet Landscape of Pakistan is an indigenous effort to regularly monitor and document the ongoing trends and challenges that impact digital and human rights in the country. This is the third edition in the series.

The report examines the rise of fraudulent news, defined here as demonstrably false information that is being presented as a factual news report with the intention to deceive the public, and the related erosion of public faith in traditional journalism. The report identifies proposed solutions at the intersection of technology, journalism, and civil society to empower news consumers with better skills and tools to help them process the torrents of information they see online.

The lack of a comprehensive legal framework for privacy rights and data protection in Lebanon has led to the adoption of illegal mass surveillance programs and to the violation of individual and collective privacy without repercussions

Since 2012, the Russian authorities have intensified a crackdown on freedom of expression, selectively casting certain kinds of criticism of the government as threats to state security and public stability and introducing significant restrictions to online expression and invasive surveillance of online activity.

In this report we take a closer look on how a traditionally safe space for free speech and expression was transformed into a space of unregulated arbitrary legal practices. We also examine the effect that the ever-changing political objectives, affiliations and temporal objectives all have on the frequency and severity of online political censorship cases.

Internet users from across the globe have come together to create a crowdsourced vision for free expression online. Over 300,000 people from 155 countries worldwide helped shape our roadmap for a Digital Future that includes us all.

A recent HKJA survey indicates a slight rise in the Hong Kong Press Freedom Index after two consecutive years of decline. Journalists on the ground believe that the situation has worsened in 2016, compared to the year before. HKJA chairperson Sham Yee-lan explained that the slight increase in the Press Freedom Index was likely to be related to the emergence of online media, which has led to some diversity in the industry.

This report presents the findings of a three-month study focused on mapping, observing and analysing online harassment of journalists in Hungary. The study aimed to identify the types of harassment journalists are subject to, which journalists are typically harassed, who the harassers are, and how journalists cope with harassment.

The Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) in 2016 maintained its control over all public affairs and punished those who challenged its monopoly on power. Authorities restricted basic rights, including freedom of speech, opinion, association, and assembly. All religious groups had to register with the government and operate under surveillance. Bloggers and activists faced daily police harassment and intimidation, and were subject to arbitrary house arrest, restricted movement, and physical assaults.

Internet freedom has declined for the sixth consecutive year, with more governments than ever before targeting social media and communication apps as a means of halting the rapid dissemination of information, particularly during anti-government protests.

IFEX publishes original and member-produced free expression news and reports. Some member content has been edited by IFEX. We invite you to contact [email protected] to request permission to reproduce or republish in whole or in part content from this site.